This volume contains a number of articles on modern Chinese history and historiography written by one of the leading academic experts on the subject. The author provides a critique of older approaches to nineteenth-century history and offers powerful reinterpretations of such key events in the recent history of China as the boxer rebellion, Mao's ascension to power in 1949, and the process of political and economic reform in the post-Mao era. This is a strong collection which will be of enormous interest to scholars of East Asian history.
Biography
Paul A Cohen is Edith Stix Wasserman Professor of Asian Studies and History, Emeritus, Wellesley College and an Associate at the Fairbank Centre for East Asian Research at Harvard University. He has published widely on Chinese History, including the award-winning History in Three Keys: The Boxers as Event, Experience and Myth (1997) and Discovering History in China: American Historical Writing on the Recent Chinese Past (1984).
'His discussion of the concepts of historical writing is thought-provoking and represents a signal reminder to the field that good history always balances the empirical with deep reflection.' - Pacific Affairs
Review in The China Quarterly 2004
